DoomBuilder feature requests: Part 2

[gemini09]

Too fucking bad the other one went out of the loop!

1. Ability to save without building nodes, as I usually save alot, just to be on the safe side, but there's no need to build the damn nodes when I'm not going to play the map right away.

2. Able to zoom in once or twice on the textures.

3. Pictures of the sprites in the sprite menu (Especially useful for when you have new sprites).

4. Sprite objects like in DCK, where the Cyberdemon's sprite object on map, for example, is represented by a much larger object, which represents its size compared to its surroundings. I know the same thing happens when you just highlight an object with the mouse, but it's just not the same.

5. The other stuff I said in Part 1.

6. Ability to save maps into existing WADs, like in DCK.


Texture alignment in 3D mode is too good to be true :-)

[kristus]

1 and 6 you can already do.

[Nmn]

2. Able to zoom in once or twice on the textures.

Would it be so useful?

3. Pictures of the sprites in the sprite menu (Especially useful for when you have new sprites).

Oh yes, I'm all forward for this one!

[gemini09]

Nmn said:

Would it be so useful?

It's not crucial, but it would be nice, as the previews are pretty small.

Kristus, care to say how? I haven't seen such options (Under File, anyway), and the dorks at #ZDoom said you could not save maps into other WAD files, haven't found an option for this myself either.

[impClaw]

also i want
thing 3d mode (a second 3d mode...)

slopes in 3d mode

deep water in 3d mode

zdoom flat/texture combinations (you can use textures as flats and flats as textures) in the 3d mode...

[Sporku]

impClaw said:

also i want
thing 3d mode (a second 3d mode...)

slopes in 3d mode

deep water in 3d mode

zdoom flat/texture combinations (you can use textures as flats and flats as textures) in the 3d mode...

Why would there need to be a second 3D mode? What exactly do you mean by "Thing 3D Mode", anyhow?

Adding Slopes and Deep Water to the 3D mode would then bring people to bug CodeImp to add in things for other engines like 3D floors and all that junk. It's probably too much work to deal with.

As for the last thing, Doom Builder already supports that. In the options, there's a setting that says "Mix texture and flat resources".

[geekmarine]

I think what he means is the ability to view THINGS in 3d mode, but I may be mistaken. Frankly, I'd like that, too. Just today I was working on these alcoves with torches, and I had to go in-game just to see if they were the right height for the torches. I think it'd be totally useful if you could THINGS showed up in 3d mode.

[cyber-menace]

BAH! That's what I say to chagning 3d mode, BAH! CodeImp has a nice working 3d Mode system that works for all of the source ports the exact same way. He has stated many times that he isn't making a new 3d mode for source port specific things. I just thought I'd say this before he did.

[gemini09]

Defaults for new 2 sided lines should be tagged upper/lower unpegs and of same texture as the linedefs connected to it.

Unless there already is something like that in the F5 menu...

[impClaw]

@agentspork: nope db does not support mixing flat and textures, if it has tell me how.

thing 3d mode = You can edit and see things in the 3d mode

[Manc]

impClaw said:

@agentspork: nope db does not support mixing flat and textures, if it has tell me how.

Yes it does. It's an option you click in the main configuration, and it's just as he said it "Mix texture/flat resources".

And you will never get a thing 3d mode from codeimp. Codeimp provides the source to db for anyone who wants to add new features. So, if someone ELSE would be interested in adding things to 3d mode, then more power to them. Personally I think that would be a great feature, but it sure isn't coming from codeimp.

[Macro11_1]

I dont know if he has this, but how about, optinal autoalline x,y? Like you can auto aline nothing, x, y, or x and y. Meh, just a sugestion.

Edit: dont know why i said nothing, but ill just say it was for effect :P

[gemini09]

Auto-align nothing?
Have you seen the auto-align menu (the A key)?

Speaking of auto, is there a MANUAL-stitch for stitching together vertices? It'd be a useful feature if you were asked to stitch together vertices when auto-stitch is off and you move vertex right on top of another.

And where is this option to save a map without building nodes?

[impClaw]

in the nodebuilder menu i think

[Metal_Sonic]

Someone told me that doomsday has the option of an object being placed above the ground.

e.g. chosing a lamp to be in mid air

So I would like to be able to set the start hieght of the object in doombuilder.

[Tolwyn]

All in all. I think these are good ideas, and I hope that, even if CodeImp doesn't implement any of these, he takes the "wish list" as a positive thing.

I think a "sprite mode" in 2d editing mode would be cool, and the source wad (if it's other than the main IWADS) could be specified at the time you open the map for editing (much like texture wads are now).

The sprites would be read between the appropriate markers.
Now, the problem is, scaling of those sprites. Maybe.

In 3D mode, there would have to be some sort of overlay technique to read sprite positions and display them (frame could be specified as an option, or default to the first frame). Scale might be an issue here as well. And some sort of scale integer would need to be set so they appear correctly.

The hardest part, I'd imagine, is Z order (sprites in the distance).

Of course, these new "features" would be optional, because I'm quite satisfied with how they are now.

In lieu of displaying the sprites, the ability to read custom sprite names from a translation table would be cool. So instead of showing "Spider Mastermind" you could specify a translation table per PWAD:

seargant:Atomic Frog
Cyberdemon:Big Hairy Fatass
etc. etc.

Now, what would be REALLY cool is to establish sector overlays using a specific color and opacity for flag.

So that if you DID have a special sector that contained a special action (tag/whatever), then the boundaries of that sector would be "highlighted" in 3D mode with a user-defined translucent color so at a glance, you know that sector is "special."

If not a color or as an option to a color, you could specify 32 bit PNG files (user assigned opacity) to "fill" the overlay on a 64x64 grid.

That make sense?

[impClaw]

i think Codeimp don't have time doing all this...

[gemini09]

This might be too abstract and useless to everyone but me, but, I was just doing some mapping, and I'm having a tough time figuring out what to do next, and I thought it'd be nice with a "sketch mode", or "scrapbook mode", or something, which works as a seperate mode, like Sector Mode, Things Mode, where everything is displayed as it would in Sector/Linedef mode, but you can pencildraw with the left mouse button as you would with a pencil on a piece of paper.

This would be useful if you have multiple ideas for parts of the map at once, you could write/draw text/areas, in a matter of seconds.

You could even easily draw a whole map, and later actually create the sectors in Linedef Mode.

Allow me to demonstrate.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/CrazyDevil/DBsketch.png

The information could be stored in the DoomBuilder files for each WAD file. And it would only display when in that mode, obviously.

Mouse button 1 would draw
Button 2 would erase
Double clicking would allow you to write a text, so you wouldn't have to carefully draw letters which turn out too big like I did

[impClaw]

well, sounds like a strange idea, though i wont have any use for it...

[gemini09]

Figured it would sound strange.

Another cool thing would be a feature where you can for example highlight sectors looking like this:

|-------|
|-------|
|-------|
|-------|
|-------|
|-------|

And press a magic key which brings up a menu, where you can tell DoomBuilder to lower sectors by whatever number, by 1, 8, 16, whatever, units, making creating sloped sectors in a non-ZDoom port faster and easier. Slopes or stairs, same thang.

To tell DoomBuilder where to start, there could be 4 directions, "Start from left/right/..", or if that could turn out buggy or difficult with diagonal sectors, then you could tell it to start by a linedef which you would select. In the example above, naturally, either the top or bottom line.

I'm getting tired here but.., there also needs to be another way to drag&select a bunch of sectors, when there is no empty space nearby, where you can start this drag process.

Another thing. If you look at the example above: If I should (in Linedef Mode) select all the textures to the left side, and then select all textures to the right side (the vertical ones), DoomBuilder will automatically include all middle textures as well. Why the fuck does it do that?

[impClaw]

sounds better....

[gemini09]

Is there a sector/linedef/vertex/sidedef limit in DoomBuilder?

[Veddge]

I think what could be really handy would be a feature in 3d mode to "hide" floating mid textures. Often times they get in the way when aligning others and it would be helpful if they could be turned on/off at a whim.

[impClaw]

gemini09 said:

Is there a sector/linedef/vertex/sidedef limit in DoomBuilder?

Dont think so..., if it is one, i think it will be like 2147483647 (long variable in vb)...

[CodeImp]

Indeed the limit in DB is somewhere at 2147483647, which is far far beyond the limits of the WAD file (65535). So editing in this range works, but saving doesnt work because the file format doesnt support this. I could solve this by saving in a custom format, like prefabs and copy/paste do, but in the end you will have to save it as a WAD file anyway to be able to play it.

[Submerge]

An Omniselect (like WadAuthor) mode, that will let you grab anything you click on, rather than having to press a button to change to things, then to lines, then to sectors, etc. etc. This would speed things up for me considerably.

And only 3 other things.

Linedef splitting (pop a vertex (or more) in the middle of a line, to split it without having to switch to vertex mode and insert one maually)
Linedef merging (select 2 linedefs, and choose 'join linedefs' from a right click menu to make em hop together, rather than having to shape one to the other and drag)

ZDoom Tagging and Scripting Capability (yeah right)